Steve Hughes is known for his terse, opinionated and salacious social commentary, but the most striking thing about Big Issues, the Australian heavy-metal drummer’s debut headline tour, is how mainstream he can be too. That is not necessarily a criticism.

Every potentially tedious observational anecdote – service stations, train toilets, picking a coffee – came with a surrealist edge or added barb that would bring Hughes back to his passionate convictions.

He nonchalantly discussed nuclear weapons in Iran, the ownership of land and being robbed in his own house by machete-wielding men. The second half’s greater focus on “big issues” threatened to turn into a lecturing final act; but Hughes's cheerfulness and lyricism kept the laughs coming.

The show’s perfectly pitched punctuation came in Hughes’s devilishly funny and surreal streak: comparing Londoners to worms, having pet Cockneys or describing the effects of magic mushrooms.

Fellow antipodean Sully O’Sullivan supported Hughes with a deadpan, instantly entertaining style. The Kiwi is hardly original with routines on dated economics and politics and his mocking of Americans and the Scottish, but he performed with impish pleasure.

Staring blankly into the audience while sinisterly tapping the microphone, he resembled a scavenger eyeing up his next meal.

If you expect biting social commentary from start to finish, Big Issues may be a disappointment, but what is lost in thought-provoking, vitriolic diatribes is more than made up with elegantly written and caringly delivered comedy.

Steve Hughes is testing our jaw strength this time, rather than our minds.